exist for Rear-Admiral Maynebrace. He had forgotten all the foreign languages that had been dinned into his head forty years ago, and since the King's Regulations say nothing about flag officers polishing up their French, Maynebrace felt no qualms. As it happened he had an invitation to meet the Governor.

With due ceremony the Admiral was piped over the side and his motor-pinnace landed him at the Kelang Steps. Somehow there was no conveyance in waiting, not even a rickshaw, so Maynebrace and his flag-lieutenant had to walk.

On his way through the dockyard the Admiral's attention was directed towards an individual who, even amidst the quaintly-costumed inhabitants of Singapore, looked singularly bizarre.

The person who attracted the notice of the mighty Maynebrace was tall, inclined to corpulence, and bowed in the shoulders. His sun-dried face was partly concealed by a bristling black moustache and an imperial. His hair, or at least what was visible outside a top hat of wondrous style, was grey.

A white waistcoat, buttoned almost to bursting strain over his embonpoint and fitting where it touched elsewhere, was cut deeply at the throat, revealing a wide, turned-down collar and an enormous red silk tie. His frock coat was of a late nineteenth century pattern; while his trousers, baggy fore and aft, were at one time "white ducks": now they were saffron colour. Sky-blue socks and brown canvas shoes completed the extraordinary "get-up."

As this remarkable personage passed the Admiral he hesitated a moment, then removing his "stove-pipe" made a most elaborate bow, a compliment that Maynebrace returned by stiffly bringing his right hand up to the edge of his white-covered peaked cap.

"Rummy codger," remarked the Admiral.

"It's the French instructor, I believe, sir," said the flag-lieutenant.

"H'm! fancy that on board my ship!"

"Regulations, sir; paragraph 574d says: Whenever practicable instruction in French is to be given to midshipmen by French instructors domiciled in British ports."

"Well, well. Thank goodness I'm not a midshipman," ejaculated Maynebrace, as he frantically signalled to a passing rickshaw-man.

Whatever opinion the Frenchman had of Rear-Admiral Maynebrace he wisely kept it to himself, and trotting along with short jerky steps he reached the place where the gig from H.M.S. "Repulse" awaited him.

The coxswain could scarce suppress a grin as the instructor stepped into the stern sheets. His surprise was still greater when the latter took the yoke-lines and gave the order to "Pull you to ze ship!"

Bending their backs to the supple ash oars the boats crew made the gig dart rapidly through the water. Some of them, possibly, wondered what order the grotesque object in the stern-sheets would give as the boat ran alongside the flagship. As a matter of fact he gave none, but pulling at the wrong yoke-line he made the light gig collide bows on with the accommodation ladder, jerking the rowers backwards off their thwarts, and causing himself to sit ungracefully upon the gratings.

Considering his corpulence the instructor picked himself up with agility and, not waiting for the boat to be brought properly alongside, made his way from thwart to thwart, gaining the foot of the accommodation-ladder by way of the bows of the gig.

At the head of the ladder he was met by the Officer of the watch. Greatly to the latter's disgust the instructor committed a most heinous offence: he spat upon the sacred precincts of the quarter-deck and coolly threw his cigarette end upon the snowy planks!

So flabbergasted was the duty-lieutenant that he said not a word, and before he could recover his composure he was anticipated by First-lieutenant Garboard.

Garboard was an officer who owed his position to influence rather than to merit. He shone in the reflected light of his parent, Sir Peter Garboard, till lately Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth.

He was one of those officers, luckily becoming rarer, who believe in cast-iron discipline amounting almost to tyranny. He would bully and brow-beat at the ship's-police when there were not enough defaulters to do the odd jobs requisitioned by the commander. When the childish punishment known as 10a (which consisted of compelling blacklist men to stand on the lee side of the quarter-deck from 8 to 10 p.m., to have their meals under the sentry's charge and to be deprived of grog and tobacco) was abolished, Garboard, then a junior lieutenant, asserted that the Service was going, to the dogs. He was never happier than when bully-ragging the men of his watch, under the plea of efficiency.

Wishing to air his French the first lieutenant remarked: "Il fait très chaud, monsieur."

The instructor whisked off his stove-pipe hat and bowed ceremoniously.

"Show?" he repeated. "Oui, ver' fine show," and looked about him as if he expected to see a floating Agricultural Hall.

"Blockhead!" muttered the discomfited Garboard as he beat a retreat, signing to a quarter-master to take the Frenchman below to the midshipmen's study.

The dozen disconsolate youngsters were already mustered, and awaited with no great zest the arrival of their instructor; but their apathy changed when the Frenchman appeared. They seemed to scent a lark.

But they were sadly mistaken if they hoped to rag that oddly-garbed individual.

"Sit you down," he said sternly. "Sit you down. You tink I haf not imparted ze instruction to ze midsheepmens before, eh? You make great mistake. Ze first zat acts ze light-headed goat he go in ze capitan's report: zen, no leave for a whole veek."

Taking up a piece of chalk the instructor wrote in a firm hand:—

"Mon frère a raison, mais ma soeur a tort."

"Now, zen," he continued, "zat young zhentleman with ze red hair. How you translate zat, eh?"

Mr. Midshipman Moxitter's particular weakness was French translation. It had caused him hours of uneasiness at Osborne and Dartmouth. By a succession of lucky shots he had foiled the examiners and had managed to scrape through in that particular subject.

Upon being asked to translate the sentence, Moxitter stood up, squared his shoulders, and said solemnly:—

"'My brother has reasons that my sister's a tart,' sir."

A roar of laughter, audible even in the captain's cabin, greeted this information. The rest of the midshipmen nearly succumbed to apoplexy, while even the Frenchman was obliged to pull out his pink silk handkerchief and press it tightly to his face.

"We vill not dispute ze point, monsieur," he said after an awkward pause. "Ze affairs of your family are of no concern to ze rest of ze class, mais you are a good-for-nothing rascal, I say. If you no better are at ze rest of ze work on ze sheep zen I say you are a young rotter."

For the full three-quarters of an hour the instructor bullied and badgered the midshipmen in a manner that outvied Lieutenant Garboard's treatment of the men. They had to submit: the alternative of having their leave stopped by the captain put all idea of resistance out of their heads. Finally he made each midshipman write in bold characters, "Mais, que je suis sot," and sign this humiliating confession.

Gathering up the papers the instructor went on deck.

"Will you take any refreshment before you leave?" asked the officer of the watch.

"No, sare, with many tanks. Permit me: my card."

The lieutenant took the proffered piece of pasteboard, and watched the Frenchman go over the side. The coxswain of the gig had been previously cautioned not to allow the instructor to handle the yoke-lines again.

As the boat headed for Kelang Steps the officer of the watch glanced at the instructor's card. It was written in a flowing hand:—

"Jean le Plaisant, professeur de litérature et des langues, Singapore."

The second time the officer of the watch looked at the piece of pasteboard more intently. He even tilted his cap on one side and